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Forum:Extra namespace
Sorry this is a bit long; It's from a discussion that was started at Talk:Knight. We want to keep the content of main articles to a fairly neutral point of view, but would also like to add "guide" pieces to this wiki, each written by a single author, containing their own opinions. An example is currently at Guide:Knight/magnet. These guides will be linked to from the page(s) on whatever subject they're about. These pages will each carry a header template, something like this, and will be organised into categories, but the questions we want to decide on are: *Do we want to put these articles into a separate namespace, to separate them from the other "more encyclopedic" content in this wiki? **If so, what do we call this namespace? *What naming convention do we have for the article titles? Using extra namespaces Namespaces are the prefix before a page name, used to distinguish different types of pages, eg: "User:", "Image:", "Project:", "Category:", "Forum:" etc. It's possible to add extra "custom" namespaces of our choosing to this wiki, but we have to ask wikia to do it, and we can only have a maximum of 3. This is why we need to spend a little time considering this issue. Both the benefits and disadvantages of separating a wiki's articles into custom namespaces are rather vague. They allow a reader to tell at a glance what type of page they're reading, or what type of page they're being linked to. To some people, dividing a wiki's content into namespaces feels "cleaner" and more organised. But many wikis don't bother, and just put everything in the main namespace. After all, you still have categories to divide up content. A disadvantage of using namespaces is that sometimes you have an article where you can't decide which namespace it should go in. (Whereas you can put an article into more than one category.) I don't know of any technical advantages to using extra namespaces. I can think of a slight disadvantage, which is that the " " function can only select from one namespace at a time. Other wikis I've tried to find other gaming wikis that offer these sorts of single-author guides, but have only found one so far: the FFXI wiki. Their guides are all in either the main namespace, or a user's own subpages. The naming convention of their guides is supposed to be " Guide by " but as you can see, it's not always followed. Suggestions Some suggestions for the name of a custom namespace for "guide" content: *'"Guide:"' -- The most obvious, but possibly a bit too general, since there'll still be "guide" material in the main namespace, just not so subjective and opinionated. *'"Strategy:"' -- Most of the material will be to do with strategy, but possibly a bit too specific? *'"Opinion:"' -- Since the articles will be based on someone's opinion. But rather newspaper-y, and possibly a bit vague. *'"Advice:"' -- Used on the wikia help wiki. A little too um, counsellor-ish. For the naming convention of the articles, I keep changing my mind over this, but I would suggest we choose one of either: *" guide (by )", or *"Guide to (by )". But also give authors the option of: *" (by )" Other material Going back to the point that we're only allowed 3 custom namespaces, we should think about what other sort of content we might have on this wiki in the future as it grows: Fan art? Fan fiction? Player character info? Clan info? Youtube video links/embeds? Other "fun stuff"? Becuase instead of creating an namespace now just for guides, we might want to instead just create a single extra namespace for all "non-encyclopedic" content. Some (bad) suggestions from me: "Extra:", "Other:", "Supplementary:". So again, in summary, the questions are: How many extra namespaces do we think we'll want? What do we call them? How will we name the guide articles? :--Onteron (talk) 02:22, 20 October 2008 (UTC) :I think "Guides" is still the best choice for non-official, or non-encyclopedic information. There is a sticky on the forum called "User created guides" that lists everything from class playing guides to lists of clans to a description of the RO economy. I think "Guide" can be used to capture any article that is non-encyclopedic i.e. a guide is anything not officially present in RO (like individual use-created clans, user developed play styles etc.). This could include the objective (how the economy operates -- not officialy controlled by NGD, so anything written about it is opinion) to the subjective (how to play a Knight, Barbarian) etc. :That leaves the other 2 custom namespaces. "Media" could include anything user related this is uploaded (do we already have that tag?). As for the 3rd namespace, I can't think of anything else right now we would have to capture. G.Slack 03:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC) ::I'm happy with "Guide:", but there's a couple of other things I want to investigate before committing to it. "Media" is already used by the software (to create links directly to files) so we can't have that unfortunately. ::I spoke to one of the wikia staff in irc about this, and apparently the "maximum 3 custom namespaces" isn't a hard-and-fast rule; we could probably get more if we really needed them asked nicely enough. --Onteron (talk) 18:07, 25 October 2008 (UTC) Ownership or Edit Protection of Guides I was just wondering if people added their own Guides, if they might feel protective of them, and get into edit wars with others who might alter them. How should we treat this? Should it just follow standard wiki etiquette with admins keeping an eye on things and settling disputes. Or should we set up ownership or copy protection of guides? Should we come up with a formal Guide policy? G.Slack 05:37, 27 October 2008 (UTC) :I had in mind that the author would "own" the article, and it would be the policy that other people wouldn't edit them, though they could make comments on the talk page of course. They would all have a template at the top, something like this. :Just to throw something else in, there's a new feature in wikia to do pages in "blog" format. See Help:Blogs. So far only the Halo Wiki seems to be using it. If we used this for the guides it would give 2 extra things: people could add comments right underneath, and people could also vote for them, creating a list of the most popular ones. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I just wanted to bring it up. :I don't know if the wikia staff are going to want to see more voices in support of the extra namespace (where's everyone gone?), but if you do ask for it, we also need 2 things while they do it: it needs to be counted as a 'content' namespace, so that it counts toward the number of articles on the site, and it needs to be included in the search by default when people use the search box on the site. --Onteron (talk) 02:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC) ::That approach and template sounds sensible for the guides, and hopefully should be enough to keep people on their best behaviour. The new Blog function looks interesting, but I don't know if it is the best fit for guides. Guides seem to be more static than blog posts, which are more of a diary. And since blogs keep the most recent content as the most visible, good posts could get buried (notwithstanding the vote function). People also seem to use the official forums for the type of things others might use a blog for. However, it seems like something to keep an eye on for the future, once the wiki reaches a certain point and we think we could handle other functions. (Personal blogs could be a headache though in terms of the tone of its content, if the official forums are any indication.). ::Our number of editors has seemed to drop a bit recently. We still are getting lots of support in the forums though, so it seems people are still aware of the wiki and supportive of it. Perhaps the honeymoon period is over, and much of the easy work is done. Maybe we could make more of a point to welcome new editors on the wiki, make them feel at home? I think most projects like of this nature end up being the work of a few dedicated people anyways (with others helping around the edges) G.Slack 03:53, 28 October 2008 (UTC) Namespace okayed without vote Wikia has approved the namespace, so there is no need for a formal vote. Here is the email: Ok, everything should be setup now. Namespace 112, "Guide" is now created, and marked as content (and is included in searches). Enjoy. If you have any other questions, feed free to ask. Regards, Uberfuzzy -- Chris Stafford Wikia Community and Technical Support Team http://www.wikia.com/ Contact us at community@wikia.com or technical@wikia.com Have not tested this yet though. G.Slack 05:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC) New Edit User Rights Wikia replied to my question on restricting user edit rights. They said that something like this might be coming soon (no hint exactly what). I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Since the launch of our Guides section is still a ways away, hopefully they will update us before then. G.Slack 23:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)